More Field Camps, Hurray!

The warmest greeting from Gina the cook at Black Island field camp. The camp is normally just the cook and camp manager.  I got to sit up front again, and had Dustin as my pilot again.

I got to spend the entire Thanksgiving weekend there (Friday afternoon, Saturday, Sunday and a bonus Monday since the weather was too poor to fly back).  Two professional cooks, Kristen and Gina and Tony the camp manager.  We spent the whole time laughing and eating.

 This is the most perfect snow angel I've ever seen, it's Gina's.

 The frozen pond at Black Island. 

 We took an outing on Monday.  The weather was too rough to fly, but not to play. I made Gina's hat.

I made Grandma Koehlinger's lemon meringe pie, and the crust from scratch!  We had it for breakfast.  Here it's cooling with the fuel tanks as the background. We also had pumpkin pie and caramel pie.

Black Island's satellites and Mt. Erebus with McMurdo station below in the distance.  Black Island is only 26 miles from McMurdo Station, a pretty short helicopter flight.  It's the communications facility for McMurdo, and where our television signal comes from. 

Black Island field camp from the helipad. The satellites are in the golf balls that keep the snow out.

 My front seat view the week before in the Dry Valleys flying to Lake Hoare field camp.

Lake Hoare and ice chunks.

Canada Glacier at Lake Hoare.  I got to stop here because the weather was too poor flying back to McMurdo from Marble Point, so we had to turn around and land here. 

 The glacier with Marianne, the scientist from Unavco, in the foreground for scale.

The other glacier at Lake Hoare

 Lake Hoare field camp.

My personal pilot Dustin, this time he's flying me to Black Island for Thanksgiving.  I told him I feel pretty lucky and also like some sort of celebrity.

The sea ice near Black Island is gorgeous, and on the way back after the snow fall during the weekend this was all entirely white. 

 Hi Dave!!!  We took a walk on Black Island our first day and here is the view of Mt. Discovery.

Lake Hoare ice formation and mountains in the background.  I lucked out and got to tag along on a 3 hour tour the camp manager was giving to a scientist and a field safety guide.  I've had a stream of great luck.  After coming down to Antarctica for a decade now (we started in 2002), this is the most I've traveled here.  All of it was unplanned and last minute, including my next adventure.  I leave this Tuesday by plane not helicopter this time, to WAIS Divide.  West Antarctic Ice Shelf field camp, where most of the ice core drilling happens and Polenet, for 2 months.  I'll be living in a tent, peeing in a bottle, eating really good food and getting to know the other 50 people.  I'm really excited.  I won't have access to internet so I can't check my yahoo or work email, so please don't write to those, I won't get them.  I will have regular mail and a special text only satellite email address that I can send you short notes on.  I love you guys very much and appreciate everything you do for me.  Oh, and here is a link to more WAIS Divide information, but you can also google it and get some good information:http://www.waisdivide.unh.edu

Field Camp Time

 Back home at Marble Point Helicopter Refueling facility in the Dry Valleys for a week.  It was a last minute "pack your bags, you're leaving in the morning" thing, totally to my joyous surprise.  My 5 time here!

 My first time flying up front in a helicopter, and it was just me and Florent the French pilot, who indulged me with a very scenic flight.  I lucked out a lot!

 My Sunday afternoon hike.  A pretty lazy day, slept in till 11, had a lot of coffe, chatted a lot, crocheted.

 Hogback in the background, and the gorgeous landscape that you get to walk over around here.

 Flo and the sea ice's edge.  The ocean is such a deep blue.  Lots of emperor penguins there!

 Fun to watch the gauges during the flight.  Also fun to have a helicopter all to myself.

 Sout Pole Traverse 1.  I got to drive them out to their tractors, hook them up to their trailers and take their group photo before taking this shot as they were leaving McMurdo.  This was Sunday the 4th.  What an honor it was.  South Pole Traverse 2 left this past Monday the 12 and made incredible mileage (37miles on their first day).  I get the email updates with their positions, which is fun to see. 

Here is the SPoT1 crew, left to right my Storm my Supervisor from Winfly, Eric a very kind man I just met, Mark the mechanic who Dave and I've known for years, Mark2 the new guy that just got hired a couple weeks ago, Slim my favorite Fuelie from last year, Dan who was a winterover Fuelie, Craig whom I just met this season, Tim Tom who is the Supervisor of this Traverse whom I made that lovely hat for, Ryan the mountaineer who Dave and I know from Palmer from 2004 and Dean, a friend for 10 seasons now, who I visited in Anchorage.  Wish I could have seen SPoT2 off too, but alas, I was out here playing with helicopters.

This is a ring I made for myself in silversmithing class.  But I made it too big so I pawned it off on our friend Keros, who Dave and I spent a lot of time with last season, playing lots and lots of jokes on each other.

 Hose Crew!  This is what I was doing for the past 3 weeks, unreeling fuel hose out to Pegasus Airfield 14 miles away.  I made it to mile 13.5 with the crew before I flew out here to Marble Point.  It's the 4th year that we've had the airfield 14 miles away, and I was on the deployment crew for 3 out of those 4 years.  That's a lot of unreeling and then at the end of the year, reeling back up of fuel hose.

Here's me and Gracie the fuel hose clamp.  We had pretty darn good weather.  Had a lot of equipment failure though, two days with the truck losing it's tire, literally, and 4 days of the Pisten Bully not even starting.  I was really lucky getting to be on the crew of such awesome guys and being on a big project, away from the mundane tasks in town and all the trainings associated with the brand new crew.  We had fun!  And now I'm really looking forward to the upcoming field camp happenings in my near future.  After this week of filling in at Marble Point, I will be flying back to station on friday, and traversing out to Black Island on Saturday morning.  That will be awesome!  I've wanted to go for ten years now.  And sometime late November, I'll fly out to WAIS Divide until mid-February, so the rest of the season.  (West Antarctic Ice Shelf, it's where they used to do a lot of the drilling for ice cores).  I can't wait honestly.  I love to camp, love the outdoors and especially the normal feel to small groups instead of the disco throngs around Station.  :)  Disko patkanyok mind. :)  Love you all very very very much, miss you, aunt Ildi. :)

October

Crevasse Training with Castle Rock in the background.

Last Sunday I talked the Traverse guys into letting me join them on their crevasse training.  I got to rappel and climb up the rope, as well as learn the knots and pulley systems.  A great Sunday!

Tied off to tractors!

 

My last week working for Traverse was mostly building these trash hauling platforms as well as driving the IT28 forklift. 

 My last trip in the Challenger, although I got to drive the CASE tractor after crevasse training on Sunday.

 Pilly the forklift and a full moon, on my last night shift. 

 This was my last night, I was loading hmw reels onto the Kress trailer.  It was cold!

A coworker of mine from night shift (there were 5 of us).  We were the only two working for South Pole Traverse that didn't actually get to go, so we joked that we were crying buddies.  But he just got picked up for the Pine Island Traverse and I just got chosen to be out at WAIS Divide field camp for the rest of the season, so there will be no tears.  As for the murderer mask, he's new and gets cold easy:):)

Night shift hiking was pretty awesome.  We went on the Hut Ridge loop twice, the Ob Hill loop twice and once to Scott Base.

Monday nights I've been taking a silversmithing class.  Here is Harry my teacher.  I made the amazing pendant that I'm wearing and will try to make a ring on Monday night.  It's such a fun thing to learn.  Time is sort of slowly but also quickly passing.  I am on the hose reel project with my friend Matt and two new guys.  We just started so we still have 14 miles to go (maybe a month like last year).  I love and miss you. 

Color Change

 McMurdo from our South Pole Traverse (SPOT) Shop.  This is how much change in light we get in a day, it's completely dark for a few hours still, enough that I saw my fourth aurora the other night.

 McMurdo from the SPOT shop, it's pretty light now at the start of our shift.  I live in the leftmost brown dormitory building (of the four of them).

 Hut point from the SPOT shop.

The end of my best shift ever!  I got to drag these two buildings (living modules) for several miles and hours from the winter staging area to near the fuel pits at the Ice Runway. It was awesome!!!  The only girl on nights dragging the biggest things we had out there!  And then these beautiful colors right as I parked them.

 The second best day ever, my last shift, dragging one of the aviation fuel tanks over to the Ice Runway.  I also got to operate the crane and pick up some steel with it that shift, and the day before drive a huge Kress trailer up the hill from Scott Base to McMurdo.  Again, pulling the biggest things out there.  So fun!

View from my tractor, lovely moon.  Love all of you.  Miss you too.  Ildiko

Winter & Tractors

 McMurdo Station from Hut Point, it's dark and cold and really really pretty!

 Vince's Cross at Hut Point

 Me and my CASE tractor out on the sea ice.  Night shift at Winter Fly In (Winfly) is pretty awesome!

 My sweet ride!

 The Challenger (other tractor that I get to drive).

 Moving snow with the CASE.

 Driving the Challenger and can't smile any bigger.

I didn't think about the darkness and didn't think I would get to be among the only 15 people (out of 390) working on the night shift at Winfly.  It's a ghost town!  I've gotten to see auroras three times now, a blue moon, the southern cross almost every night and some pretty incredible satellites.  I love the darkness!  I don't want the sun to come out.  We've had a couple of nights where the temperature dipped down to -59F.  Our crew is just 5 of us and we're getting the equipment and supplies ready for the South Pole Traverse.  Some of that involves pulling equipment and buildings out of the snow that has gathered around the gear since the end of last summer.  Who knew I would love driving tractors this much, I sure didn't.  I'm really really really hoping to get picked up for the summer for the Traverse, but if not I'll be back on day shift in Fuels.  Dave just went back to the Slope after having a wonderful two weeks with his family.  I and everyone else on this continent miss him dearly.  Love you all!  Ildiko